Dividing the assets of a marriage is complicated, especially when those assets are precious friendships. Deciding who gets custody of mutual friends can be one of the most heartbreaking tasks of separation and divorce.
The reader gets a sense that the writer has been there, done that. When shared experience is written from the heart we relate to it and, with luck, derive comfort from it.
I am a recently separated sixty year old male with a sixteen year old daughter who lives partly with me and partly with her mother. I have dipped my toes in the dating scene and found things going swimmingly until I mention my daughter and then suddenly found that things have gone frosty.
I’m taking time out from a hectic travel schedule. From my table at the window I look out at a Sunday market in the tiny Place Lino Ventura. A full length mirror is placed outside a clothes stall directly in my line of vision. A middle aged woman trying on a leopardskin coat transforms before my eyes. She swings it this way and that, coming alive in front of the looking glass. She isn’t thinking about the shopping, the cooking or the week ahead. Suddenly radiant in the light Parisian drizzle, I imagine she is thinking about where such a coat might take her.
On Easter Saturday in 2011, an army of friends helped move me into my new home. One minute the place was full of people, the next it was empty except for me and a thousand boxes.
If the firstborn is a dictator, the second will be something else. Once a job description has been filled, another must be created. One might be the high achiever, the next might be the peace-maker and so on. I was the third of five children; the good girl; the little sister who knew her place; the older sister who indulged her younger brothers; the good student who wanted to do well. Let’s face it – I was the pleaser. My twin desires to do well and to please instilled in me a rather suspect work ethic. Combined with my ‘look at moy’ attitude, I must have driven my school friends crazy.
It would seem Harvey Weinstein has left a trail of destruction in his wake following the revelations of his unbridled sexual predation. Survivors are coming out of the woodwork at such a rate of knots there is nowhere for Weinstein to go except therapy and – possibly – gaol.
Forming new relationships after a long period of being single can be hard enough without jumping into co-habitation. Living full-time with your new partner’s children, pets and habits takes some adjustment for both of you. Fear not: Apartners are the latest trending alternative to live-in lovers.
The harvest you reap will sustain you throughout bountiful spring times and miserable winters. Luckily for me, my garden has been lovingly tended and has produced the best assortment of flowers a girl could wish for.
Not so for the lucky ones among us who count the family we partnered into as friends. Harper Lee could have been talking about ex inlaws in this passage from To kill a mockingbird:
‘Atticus says you can choose your friends but you sho’ can’t choose your family, an’ they’re still kin to you no matter whether you acknowledge ’em or not, and it makes you look right silly when you don’t.’
